Tufin: Product Overview and Insight

eWEEK is building a new IT products and services section that encompasses most of the categories that we cover on our site. In it, we will spotlight the leaders in each sector, which include enterprise software, hardware, security, on-premises-based systems and cloud services. We also will add promising new companies as they come into the market.

Today: Tufin (network security policy management)

Company description: Tufin (pronounced TWO-fin) is a provider of network security policy orchestration for enterprise cybersecurity. More than 2,000 users spanning all industries and geographies use Tufin to simplify the management of some of the largest, most complex networks consisting of thousands of firewalls, routers, SDN and leading private and public cloud platforms. Enterprises select the company’s award-winning Tufin Orchestration Suite to increase agility while maintaining a robust security posture. Tufin provides visibility and analysis across the heterogeneous network to help organizations maintain a unified security policy baseline, reduce their attack surfaces and ensure reliable application connectivity. Its best-in-class network security change automation enables enterprises to implement security changes in minutes instead of days with proactive risk analysis and continuous policy compliance.

Tufin partners with leading firewall vendors that include Check Point, Cisco Systems, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, Juniper and Forcepoint to ensure the integrity of security policy changes across multi-vendor environments. Tufin extends its platform through open APIs to integrate with ticketing systems, vulnerability management, incident response, SOAR, EPP and other security solutions to provision changes and provide a single pane of glass for managing network security policies.

Founded in 2005 by co-founders CEO Ruvi Kitov and CTO Reuven Harrison, Tufin is a privately held company based in Israel with its U.S. headquarters in Boston, Mass.

Markets: Cybersecurity is critical for enterprises of all sizes. As enterprises embrace digital transformation and adopt new technologies such as cloud-based services, software-defined networks, microservices and containers, the IT and cloud environments become increasingly complex and vulnerable to attack. In response to the heightened threat environment, lack of a defined network perimeter and a constantly changing attack surface, enterprises continue to implement additional firewalls, endpoint security, identity and access management and other security solutions.

Tufin focuses on the Forbes Global 2000 to help simplify management of some of the largest, most complex networks in the world, consisting of thousands of firewalls, routers, SDN and leading hybrid cloud platforms. Tufin serves over 2,000 users spanning all industries, including financial services, telecommunications, utilities and energy, healthcare, retail, transportation, education, government, manufacturing and managed service providers.

International Operations:

Boston, Mass. (US)
Cleveland, Ohio (US)
Reading, England (UK)
Ramat Gan, Israel

Product and Services

The Tufin Orchestration Suite is a complete solution for automatically designing, provisioning, analyzing and auditing network security policy changes from the application layer down to the network layer. With the Orchestration Suite, IT and security organizations can centrally manage and control network segmentation, continuously monitor adherence and identify violations to security policy and automate changes throughout the entire data-center via a single interface.

Tufin Orchestration Suite is comprised of:

SecureTrack: A comprehensive firewall and security policy management solution for multi-vendor firewalls, next-generation firewalls and cloud platforms (public, private and hybrid). SecureTrack ensures that firewall and security policies are optimized to enable business connectivity while meeting the most stringent security and compliance requirements.
SecureChange: A comprehensive solution for optimizing and automating network configuration changes and provisioning to firewalls, routers, Software Defined Networks, and the cloud. SecureChange increases agility, visibility and control for the network security change process; enabling enterprises to implement accurate changes while maintaining security and compliance in minutes instead of days.
SecureApp: A business-driven solution to ensure secure application connectivity. With its unique application centric approach, network and application teams can collaboratively deploy, update, monitor and decommission applications and services from the network with ease. By providing insight into an application’s connectivity needs and status, SecureApp helps to accelerate service deployment, assure business continuity and simplify network operations.
Tufin Orca: Tufin Orca provides cloud-based, security automation for container and microservice environments. From vulnerability scanning and compliance validation during every CI/CD cycle, to identifying risks at runtime and taking policy-based action, Tufin Orca shields applications from constantly evolving threats.
Tufin Iris: Tufin Iris scans cloud environments to discover risks and configuration issues, then combines this with resource metadata to visualize cloud application access connectivity. Its tag-based policy controls allow fine grain access control within and between applications in the cloud. Tufin Iris provides visibility into risk exposure and security policy automation enabling IT to quickly respond to critical applications most under threat.

Tufin Professional Services ensures the success of users by providing a high level of expertise to complex enterprise environments and extends the unique benefit of Tufin products to integrate with enterprise ticketing systems and security solutions across the IT infrastructure.

Key Features

Tufin Orchestration Suite enables users to:

Accelerate business agility through end-to-end automation of security changes. This automation-based solution allows users to implement their application changes onto the network in minutes, not days. The solution accelerates security management processes, increases operational efficiency and reduces the traditional lag between software development and revenue generating deployment. Increased efficiency frees up valuable IT resources to focus on higher-value tasks, all while remaining secure and compliant.
Reduce security risk through adoption of a unified security policy and continuous compliance. Effective security policy governs how individuals, systems and applications communicate. Tufin enables organizations to create a unified security policy that acts as the foundation of their security decision making. A well-defined security policy is baked into Tufin automation, guiding the change implementation logic and ensuring continuous compliance with corporate security policies, government regulations and industry standards.
Increase operational efficiency and reduce complexity of hybrid and fragmented networks with a single pane of glass. Tufin offers a centralized security management layer that analyzes, defines and implements enterprise-specific security policies. The network abstraction layer allows for automation of security changes across the network, including firewalls, traditional networks, public and private cloud environments and microservices and containers.
Enhance visibility and control. The solution provides users with complete visibility over the network and enables them to view changes and their impact on security posture in real time. It monitors, collects and records configuration changes across the enterprise and verifies their adherence to the unified security policy, helping users visualize the resulting compliance gaps and related vulnerabilities. Tufin uses topology intelligence to map out resources and connections, even across fragmented, complex networks, allowing users to quickly troubleshoot broken connectivity and ensure business continuity.

Insight and Analysis

IT Central Station has several reviews of Tufin Orchestration Suite. Go here to read them. Here’s a sample comment:

How has Tufin helped my organization? “With path analysis, you can specify a source, a destination, and a port and it will tell you whether it’s blocked or not, and where; which firewall is doing the blocking or the allowing, or whatever. That part is very useful. When you have feedback from the user and you have your source, destination, and port, instead of trying to search on the Check Point console or the Panorama console or the Juniper console to figure out where that packet being dropped, you go to Tufin, put it in and, in 30 seconds, you have your answer.

“It saves time on each ticket. Instead of playing around for 15 or 20 minutes, it’s down to 30 seconds. Any first-line of support can go to Tufin, put in the source, destination, and port and they can at least know what to look for, who to involve to further troubleshoot the issue. It’s a first-step investigation that saves time.

“It also helps us ensure that our security policies are followed across our entire hybrid network.”

Gartner Peer Reviews has four reviews of Tufin’s Orchestration Suite. Here’s one sample comment:

Overall Comment: “We have been using Tufin for three plus years now. Secure Change and Secure Track. Both work well, integrate with AD for authentication of users, Taccas and Radius for authentication to devices. The Network map it creates is helpful for many things, and can be exported to Visio. The Secure Change is excellent for tracking and approving all firewall changes and validating they were implemented correctly.”

What do you like most about the product or service? “Ensure the VM meets or exceeds the specs provided. Also use a separate service account for device auditing.”

What do you dislike most about the product or service? “GUI is not ‘modern,’ meaning that where you think some administration settings are, they are not. Small inconvenience, but not overly difficult once you know where to look.”

What one piece of advice would you give other prospective customers? “Make sure that you have Secure Track setup before deploying Secure Change, so the change validation works smoothly.”

eWEEK score, based on aggregate reviews: 4.6/5.0

List of current users:

RWE
Capital One
Slovak Telekom
Fujitsu
Swisscom
Salt River Project
Virgin Media
TransUnion
Telenor
Monext
Six Group
Axpo
BMW
Ensono

Delivery: Tufin Orchestration Suite is typically installed on-premises using a pre-installed appliance (Tufin offers three appliance models for different customer deployment scenarios) or as a virtual appliance on a VM. The Tufin server requires network connectivity to the monitored devices (firewalls, routers, cloud platforms) while the client is web-based. Tufin Orca and Tufin Iris are SasS-based.

Pricing: Tufin Orchestration Suite is typically sold as a perpetual license with additional cost for professional services and annual ongoing maintenance and support.

Tufin Orca and Tufin Iris are SaaS-based solutions offered under annual subscriptions.

Other key players in this market: